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Loading... NW (original 2012; edition 2013)by Zadie Smith, Alva Dahl
Work InformationNW by Zadie Smith (2012)
   Top Five Books of 2013 (118) » 15 more Books Read in 2016 (564) Female Author (449) Books Read in 2015 (2,110) The Hive Recommends (19) Best Literary Walks (21) No current Talk conversations about this book.  thewilyf | Dec 25, 2023 |    ) CricklewoodLibrary | Oct 28, 2023 |  ) JamieStarr | Jul 15, 2023 | The reason for the low rating is that while the novel was compelling, as mentioned it was not my cup of tea. But mostly it was incredibly depressing. Is that what we all have to look forward to in adult hood? Or is that just the vision of those who do not dream of something else, something better? (  ) justgeekingby | Jun 6, 2023 | ) tmilaandlc | Apr 9, 2023 |
 Half sentences, fragments, broken syntax and line, dialect, sometimes no punctuation. The linear narrative under reconstruction, jackhammer to the fourth wall of fiction, the suspension bridge of disbelief like the London Bridge of the nursery rhyme, falling down. Busting the glass ceilings....Nobody is going to accuse Smith of being straitlaced or staid, of pandering to her huge audience or of writing a “perfect” novel. Instead, Smith seems to be out to undo the conventional novel. Do the narrative hijinks pay off? Smith derails the reader from the worn ruts of what to expect, provokes surprise. She tests the support beams of plot, knocking them down when she can....Lisa Moore’s stage adaptation of her novel, February, premieres at the Alumnae Theatre in Toronto from Sept. 21 to Oct. 6. At these times and others it’s hard to shake the sense that all the experimentation is more fun for the author than illuminating for the reader. Why exactly, for example, are those vignettes numbered? And what’s the significance of the number 184? The mere asking of such questions is an annoyance, taking up energy that would be better spent savouring the novel’s strengths...Here, then, is a tricky case. This reviewer finds himself in the strange position of calling NW one of his favourite books of the year, yet being unable to recommend it wholeheartedly. Like John Lanchester’s Capital, another recent novel that sought to capture the ever-shifting essence of today’s London between two covers, NW proffers a rich and varied banquet yet leaves the reader’s hunger ultimately unsatisfied.  As a writer, Smith finally seems perfectly at ease: less like she’s trying to please and more like she’s delighting in her jaw-dropping mastery of language and dialect. This is, hands down, her best novel to date.  The trailing plot threads aren't exactly tied off, more tucked back in. The real mystery of NW is that it falls so far short of being a successful novel, though it contains the makings of three or four. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
"Four Londoners - Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan - try to make adult lives outside of Caldwell, the council estate of their childhood. From private houses to public parks, at work and at play, their London is a complicated place, as beautiful as it is brutal, where the thoroughfares hide the back alleys and taking the high road can sometimes lead you to a dead end."--From publisher's information. No library descriptions found. 
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.49)
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Wikipedia in English (1)
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What Smith does here with language is wonderful; it's random, fragmentary, stream-of-consciousness. Not "postmodern" -- though the novel is partly about that dizzying, interconnected, overstimulated chaos of our 21st-century lives, tethered to our mobile devices -- it's perhaps, more quaintly, modern. Joycean is the quickest, perhaps cliched, descriptor to mind, Smith popping into the heads of her characters, lonely flaneurs all, as they wind their way, through the council flats and streets of northwest London. The prose may not work for everyone; there's a whiff of brash, first-draft-out-of-M.F.A.-school, experimentation (and to be clear, I'm implying nothing pejorative here), but when was the last time you saw established writers still willing to take these sorts of risks? (